Related papers: Designing binary mixtures of colloidal particles w…
We report on the construction of colloidal stars: 1 micrometer polystyrene beads grafted with a dense brush of 1 micrometer long and 10 nm wide semi-flexible filamentous viruses. The pair interaction potentials of colloidal stars are…
Patchy particles have received great attention due to their ability to develop directional and selective interactions and serve as building units for the self-assembly of innovative colloidal molecules and crystalline structures. Although…
The most critical limitation to the wide-scale use of classical molecular dynamics for alloy design is the availability of suitable interatomic potentials. In this work, we demonstrate a simple procedure to generate a library of accurate…
Self-organized complex structures in nature, e.g. viral capsids, hierarchical biopolymers, and bacterial flagella, offer efficiency, adaptability, robustness, and multi-functionality. Can we program the self-assembly of three-dimensional…
Photonic crystals -- a class of materials whose optical properties derive from their structure in addition to their composition -- can be created by self-assembling particles whose sizes are comparable to the wavelengths of visible light.…
Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
We propose that a system of colloidal particles interacting with a honeycomb array of optical traps that each contain three wells can be used to realize a fully packed loop model. One of the phases in this system can be mapped to Baxter's…
In living cells, proteins self-assemble into large functional structures based on specific interactions between molecularly complex patches. Due to this complexity, protein self-assembly results from a competition between a large number of…
Molecules with versatile functionalities and well-defined structures, can serve as building blocks for extreme nanoscale devices. This requires their precise integration into functional heterojunctions, most commonly in the form of…
Functional nanoparticles (NPs) have gained significant attention as a promising application in various fields, including sensor, smart coating, drug delivery, and more. Here, we propose a novel mechanism assisted by machine-learning…
Honeycomb layered tellurates represent a burgeoning class of multi-functional materials with fascinating crystal-structural versatility and a rich composition space. Despite their multifold capabilities, their compositional diversity…
Colloidal self-assembly -- the spontaneous organization of colloids into ordered structures -- has been considered key to produce next-generation materials. However, the present-day staggering variety of colloidal building blocks and the…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions, we simulate a two-dimensional system of colloids with competing interactions that can undergo fragmentation. In the absence of any…
We present a direct method for solving the inverse problem of designing isotropic potentials that cause self-assembly into target lattices. Each potential is constructed by matching its energy spectrum to the reciprocal representation of…
Hypothesis: Colloidal molecules with anisotropic shapes and interactions are powerful model systems for deciphering the behavior of real molecules and building units for creating materials with designed properties. While many strategies for…
The spontaneous assembly of particles in suspension provides a strategy for inexpensive fabrication of devices with nanometer-scale control, such as single-electron transistors for memory or logic applications. A scaleable and robust method…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of a simple off-lattice patchy-particle model for DNA `bricks'. We relate the parameters that characterise this model with the binding free energy of pairs of single-stranded DNA molecules. We verify that…
The interplay between shape anisotropy and directed long-range interactions enables the self-assembly of complex colloidal structures. As a recent highlight, ellipsoidal particles polarized in an external electric field were observed to…
Recent simulations have studied the formation of patterns in a binary mixture of immiscible surfactants absorbed onto the surface of a spherical nanoparticle. The resulting patterns (Janus, spots and stripes) were in good agreement with…